" One of the most influential learning theories in psychology, Albert Bandura's social learning theory of 1977 states that instead of acquired behavior being strictly a matter of rewards or reinforcements, it can be brought about through observational learning. He states that people grasp how to behave based on the behavior of the people around them.
People are surrounded by models that can be observed, be it a person's parents, peers, teachers, or even characters on a TV show. These models provide both masculine and feminine behaviors that can be observed or encoded, and then later imitated or copied. A person will be more likely to imitate a behavior of someone who he or she feels more similar to. Often, this means a person of the same sex. There are three main concepts to Bandura's social learning theory:
1. A person can learn behavior through observation: This can be from a live model (an actual person performing the behavior), a verbal model that provides instructions (an explanation or description of a particular behavior), or a symbolic model (behaviors portrayed in books, television, and film).
2. The mental state is an important aspect to learning: While environmental reinforcement is one aspect of learning a behavior, it is not the only one. Satisfaction, pride, and feelings of accomplishment are examples of what Bandura called intrinsic or internal reinforcement. In other words, internal thoughts can play an important role in learning a behavior.
3. Learning does not mean that a behavior will necessarily change: Behaviorists believed that learning a behavior led to a permanent change in the individual's behavior, but Bandura shows that with observational learning, a person can learn the new information without having to demonstrate this behavior. Conversely, just because a behavior is observed does not mean it will be learned. For social learning to be a success, there are certain requirements:
- Attention: To learn, one must pay attention, and anything that diminishes attention will negatively affect observational learning.
- Retention: One must be able to store the information, and hen at a later time be able to pull it back up and use it.
- Reproduction: After paying attention and retaining information, the observed behavior has to be performed. Practice can lead to improvement of the behavior.
- Motivation: The last part to successfully learning an observed behavior is that a person must be motivated to imitate the behavior. It is here where reinforcement and punishment come into play. If an observed behavior is reinforced, one might wish to duplicate that response; while if an observed behavior is punished, one might be motivated to not do such an action.
THE BOBO DOLL EXPERIMENT
To show that children observe and imitate behaviors around them, Bandura created the famous Bobo doll experiment. In conducting his experiment, Bandura found that children who watched the aggressive models generally imitated a good deal more of the responses toward the bobo doll that the children in the control or the children in the group who watched the nonaggressive models. He also found that girls who watched the aggressive model expressed more verbally aggressive responses when the model was the woman, and more physically aggressive responses when the model was the man. The boys imitated physically aggressive acts more than the girls did, and they imitated the same-sex model more often than the girls did. Through the Bobo doll experiment, Bandura was able to successfully show that the children learned a social behavior, in this case, aggression, by watching the behavior of someone else. With the Bobo doll experiment, Bandura was able to disprove a key notion of behaviorism that stated that all behavior is the result of rewards and reinforcement.
EXPERIMENT Conducting the Bobo doll
experiment
1.This experiment utilizes thirty-six boys and thirty-six girls ranging from three to six years old.
2.The control for the experiment is a sub-group of twelve boys and twelve girls.
3.The role models in the experiment are one adult man and one adult woman.
4.Twenty-four boys and girls are allowed to watch as the man or woman aggressively attack a toy called the "Bobo doll." Among other things, they hit it with a hammer and throw it in the air while screaming things like, "Pow, boom," and "Sock him in the nose."
5.Another group of twenty-four boys and girls are exposed to a model who is nonaggressive toward the Bobo doll.
6.Lastly, the control group is not exposed to any model.
"Studying psychology is fun because you're always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story." - Chris Cleave
~Bella
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